


The Web of the World

by Dwimordene



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drama, Multi-Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 08:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4215194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dwimordene/pseuds/Dwimordene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Vairë the Weaver [...] weaves all things that have ever been in Time into her storied webs [...]" - "Valaquenta", <em>Silmarillion</em> <br/><br/> It is hard to love the world that is. Nevertheless, someone has to do it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Web of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

She is one with the Music – from the first, Vairë's ears were full of Song, which she chorused, consumed, bound to be in her world-knot. Through all her hands the Music passes, becomes what It _has been_ – forever.  
  
One arm, two, then another, and those next take Singing in, tie Song down as Being. For the Future breathes soulful Sounds that, game-like, waver senselessly, _naughtifying_. Vairë spins as she hears, feels deeds grow weighty in her threads – kind and cruel alike.   
  
She must love them more than her own vision, for _having been_ makes creatures _be_ : substance is all hist'ry...   
  
So she does not look. Her lover's halls thicken with threads, and he, who must not hear, tells them to her, who must not see: whispers of golden light, of knotted swaths of scarlet satin weave she has made, yet never seen, nor ever will. If she looks, she may see _them_ looking back, the Singers bound to be their Sungs – she may falter, she may wish...  
  
But who makes the All be, must be clear as Breath, that others' hands authorize. Thus Vairë casts the threads of Song, and her self-blind helpers catch and spin the world's own weight.   
  
Yet Time, exceeding history, works its wonders – and its woundings. To love what _is_ in its _having been_ more than feathery _may be_ s is hard. Vairë knows it. For once, lust woke in hatred of such heavy-weighted being, and opened eyes that would devour all the Weave – returning all to the unformèd _No_ of timeless Dark.   
  
She had looked then – the one free act of Lady Fate within Time, to look once upon her once-loving handmaid and weep! Thus Vairë passed once and always – forever – into the world-web, in her tears and transgression for the evil of her poor Gloomweaver.   
  
And she bound herself, wove her own devoted darkness into being over every of her eyes – there is no enlightenment, only Truth, for the Weaver's dark night of souls.  
  
For she so loves the world that she shall put her _I_ out with her eyes for its wild wonders – forever.

* * *

**Author's Notes** : Four words about this tribble and a half's content, both thematic and in a couple of key instances metaphoric: Thank you, [Emmanuel Levinas](http://www.amazon.com/Existence-Existents-Emmanuel-Levinas/dp/0820703192).   
  
_A note on Vairë_ : Among much else, Tolkien says, in _Laws and Customs of the Eldar_ as well as _The Silmarillion_ , that the Valar do not have bodies. They can take on forms on analogy to embodied beings choosing to put on a particular set of clothes ("LACE," _MR_ 218; "Ainulindalë," _Silm_ 11). Given the extreme difference between a set of clothes and embodiment, this is a fairly clear admission that even when visible, the Valar are never bodily beings.  
  
He also wrote, though, that Valar will, when they adopt a form, adopt a sexed form, since sex is a temperament ("Ainulindalë," _Silm_ 11). Although that is, I think, a whole other destabilizing can of worms, the point that interested me was the intersection of the clothing analogy and the way that form is supposed to "body forth" the will or invisible nature of the Vala or Valië, rather than be an imposition of the world upon the Vala or Valië, which I ended up formulating this way:   
  
"If form isn't necessary to the Valar, yet their souls have certain immaterial but innate 'temperaments' or qualities that tend naturally to manifest in whatever forms the Valar take on, is there any reason that a Vala or Valië has to take on the form of a speaking being? Why not something else that better suited his or her cosmic function, which, for beings like the Valar, is at least as innate and independent of bodiliness as sex?"   
  
That, combined with the mystery of Ungoliant's origins, spurred me to make Vairë and her Maiar-helpers "body forth" as "naturally" spider-form beings.


End file.
